Smelly Subway Guy

This one’s for you “Smelly Subway Guy,” you finally took it one step too far.

You know who you are. I’ve sat beside you two million times in my short-tenure in Boston. Not by choice, mind you…but rather because you seek me out. Like a fat man in a grocery store finds the Twinkies…you, my odiferous friend, find me.

Remember last Sunday morning when the train was pretty much empty? I was sitting all alone at one end of the car, dominating a rather unchallenging sudoku, when you sauntered in at South Station. I use the word sauntered with a pinch of salt, because in actuality you more or less stumbled onto the train and mercifully fell onto the seats and not the floor.

But hey, don’t get me wrong…that’s cool. I’m down with you being hammered at 10:30 in the morning on a Sunday…that’s your thing. I know some dudes from college who would probably be in the same boat. However, this is where they differ from you Stinky McSmellslikeass. They wouldn’t move down and sit one seat away from the only other person on the train. They wouldn’t lean ridiculously close and imply that they were trying to smell my hair.

It doesn’t smell good. I buy my shampoo at the dollar store, dude. It smells like the inside of my Twins cap…not strawberries, not lilacs, not lavender…but hair. It smells like hair and sweat. And sometimes like bacon, but that’s a whole different tangent right there. The simple fact of the matter here is that you don’t smell a dude’s hair. This has nothing to do with sexuality or an overwhelming rush of machismo…I just don’t think any dude should be sticking his snout in some other dude’s mane.

Men aren’t supposed to smell nice, we’re supposed to smell like oil, sawdust, sweat and—occasionally—the aforementioned bacon; but people don’t sniff us, because we aren’t supposed to be sniffable. This is something you are obviously unaware of Captain Stinks-a-lot. There’s a reason why I don’t scamper from one car to another to take a big ole whiff of that fragrance you’re sporting. What was it, Gutter No. 5 or the new Adidas Scents of the Landfill collection? How you’ve managed to combine the smell of spoiled milk, feet and moldy lettuce is beyond me and I’d like to keep it beyond me–at least half a subway car’s length beyond me. Long story short…that stinkity-stank is all yours and I’m not moving in on your territory to get a sample.